Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Musurgia!

We recently stumbled across Musurgia, purveyors of Fine, Rare & Peculiar Musical Instruments. Peculiar, indeed. Here you'll find some real center-stage freakshow items, such as the inexplicably-forgotten Musical Pitchfork (which has mysteriously disappeared from the site, so I've captured it here for posterity--Michael Simmons sez that the Musical Pitchfork never caught on because it never had a credible celebrity endorsement, as the Musical Saw did).

Search on "ukulele" and you'll find some great information for uke historians and collectors. And don't miss Musurgia's sister site, RetroFret. On RetroFret, ukuleles will be found under "other," along with lutherial mongrels such as Octophones ("The owner of the Octophone has the [dubious, ed.] advantage of combining eight different instruments in one, namely Tenor Banjo, Tenor Guitar, Mandolin, Mandola, Mandocello, Ukulele, Tiple and Taropatch. These changes are brought about by variations in tuning"), Tambourzitas, and, if presumably, if they still had one, Musical Pitchforks.